Chapter Fifteen Ren #4
“She should be proud of you,” Violet insists, and I’m surprised at how convinced she sounds.
“Why?”
“You take care of everyone,” she says. “Even when it isn’t easy.”
“Yeah, well, I often make a mess of things along the way.”
“Like…getting arrested?” Violet hedges gently toward the subject, but there’s no horror in her voice.
She sounds straightforward, like my arrest isn’t some terrible thing that must hurt me every time it’s mentioned.
Still, my hands go clammy, while my throat is dry.
I’ve been conditioned to my shame. “What happened?”
I’m so stiff on the rock, I might as well be made from the same granite. Violet leans back, body as fluid as the water rippling past. Reminds me of her curving against the truck hub. Hell. Violet compels every story from me.
“It was thievery. Stupid stuff like stealing car parts and copper wiring from apartment buildings. An older guy showed me how and then would sell the stuff and give me a buck or two. I think…I wasn’t thinking.
I was fourteen and angry all the time. We needed money.
It also seemed like a way to, I don’t know, hit back at a world that always seemed to hit me.
Didn’t work. Learned something valuable, though. The world wins every time.”
“How long were you in jail?” Violet asks, her question somehow unobtrusive.
“Few days.”
I used my phone call to ring Mama, but I knew it was pointless.
She couldn’t afford to bail me out, and she was so pissed at me that even if she could she would’ve left me for dead.
It was Emi who took a loan from a bondsman in Van Nuys and got me out.
Loan had horrible interest, and I worked my ass off for the next two years to pay it off.
Emi was waiting outside the jail when I was released, stumbling out of the building like a blinking owl in daylight. She lectured me and then hugged me and told me to never leave her again.
“Was it frightening?”
“Just a little cold.” Everything in jail was steel, turning the place into a damn icebox.
Steel benches, steel brackets anchoring the benches to the floor, steel handcuffs clanking from the officers’ belts.
Steel bars. It was April in Southern California, so I didn’t need a jacket that day, but by nighttime, cold had settled into my bones.
Combine that with how anxious I was, and I was trembling like a leaf.
“It’s where I saw the postcard for Santa Fe.
Kinda got into my mind and never left.” I think about Mr. Nomura saying I’m not the type to run away.
I shift on the rock. “So, all that to say, I don’t plan on ever going back. ”
“Good,” Violet says. “I’d miss you too much if you ever did.”
“And I’d miss you, too,” I return softly, even though my mind races. “But look—I’m a fast learner. I got locked up with you this time around, slugger.”
She lets out a surprised laugh.
“I suppose you did! Very cunning, Ren.”
“You can have the school smarts, and I’ll have the street smarts,” I boast, making a muscle. She rolls her eyes, but her grin grows at the same time. “I still haven’t seen any of your drawings,” I dare to say. I really want to. I’ve been curious ever since she mentioned them.
“I draw on my letters for Otōsan,” she says.
“I have one in my pocket. I haven’t written it yet, but the drawing is done.
” Carefully, she removes a folded piece of paper and holds it out to me.
I take the paper, unfold it, and hold it up.
The moon and stars are bright overhead and provide just enough light.
A figure with long white hair and skeletal features is submerged underwater.
Coral entraps it. Shafts of sunlight cut through the water, reaching toward it, and the figure’s limbs are translucent.
You can see through the skin straight to its skeleton.
Every bone notches neatly together and decay seeps from the joints, drifting away in the current.
“It’s a yūrei.” Violet speaks in a rush. “A ghost. It’s not quite right. Something about the shading is off.”
“Damn, it’s great.” By God, she’s Leonardo da Vinci.
I’ve never seen a black-and-white image look so alive, so…
colorful. Violet has created every gradient of black, gray, and white.
Not only is it technically strong, but it’s beautiful, eerie, and grotesque.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more compelling image in my life.
I raise my eyes from the sketch to her face, as though I need the one to understand the other more. “It’s really great, Violet.”
She hesitates, like she’s about to point out more deficiencies. Then, a slow smile blossoms across her lips. I think I’m seeing part of her I haven’t before. Like she’s trusting me in a way no one else has. I’m so taken by her and the moment that everything fades around us.
There’s only Violet.
Nothing else.
Maybe it’s been this way ever since I saw her outside the bus. And God help me, I don’t think it will ever change.
I almost don’t hear it when the god’s whistle cuts across the water.